Skill sets

by Thomas Cooper

A matter of time

As pensions have disappeared from the retirement lexicon, and the promise of Social Security has become less-than-promising, financial advisors have urged remaining on the job past age 65, to 70 and beyond. An individual employed in white-collar work, an editor for a university magazine, say, who works with his wit and exercises regularly, might fancy his chances for prolonged productivity. But is this, in fact, realistic, and what of the prospects for blue-collar workers—can bricklayers or housepainters carry on working into their seventies?

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Three scholars at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR)—senior research project manager Anek Belbase, research economist Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, and research associate Christopher Gillis—recently explored what they call “employment lifespans”—the age at which work-related skills begin to decline in various jobs. The team looked at 954 occupations identified by the federal Occupational Information Network (O*NET). Last updated in 2010, the O*NET list resembles a modern-day version of Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” a roll call of judicial law clerks, fire prevention and protection engineers, rock splitters, concierges, switchboard operators and answering service employees, midwives, financial analysts, solderers and brazers, tire builders, real estate brokers, pipefitters, tree fellers, elevator installers, roofers, fashion designers, waiters, and washers.

O*NET also has identified 52 abilities required for performing any of these jobs, including cognitive skills such as memorization and deductive reasoning, physical abilities (dexterity and explosive strength), and sensory abilities (night vision and sound localization), and has ranked the importance of these attributes for each job (explosive strength, for instance, is of little value to an editor).

Working from O*NET’s list of abilities, the Boston College researchers surveyed medical, psychological, and occupational studies to determine which of the 52 diminish prior to retirement age (when one can collect Social Security—currently 62) and which do not. They found, for example, that “fluid” cognitive abilities, such as being able to recall specific autobiographical events, “and the speed of deductive and inductive reasoning,” may begin to ebb by one’s thirties, while “crystallized” cognitive abilities (e.g., vocabulary) may grow into a worker’s seventies. Oral and written comprehension and, often, math skills, also hold up well. Explosive strength and balance decline by the sixties while “static strength”—the ability to hold objects in place—deteriorates only slightly.

Collating the relative importance of different skills and the rate of their deterioration, the researchers ranked the longevity prospects of all 954 jobs, to create what they call a Susceptibility Index.

In the main, the results are not surprising. White-collar jobs are indeed less prone to the effects of aging than are blue-collar ones. The 20 occupations most susceptible—numbers 935 through 954—include 11 categorized as “helpers” (e.g., to stonemasons and paperhangers), “operators” (of pile-drivers or continuous mining machines), or “workers” (in the insulation or fishing industry). The 20 least susceptible to the travails of aging include managers (of artists and athletes and real estate), labor relations specialists, and budget analysts. One profession dominates the top 20 long-lived occupations (with seven spots): “post-secondary teacher,” be the subject history, business, sociology, or foreign languages and literature. This result reflects a reliance on accumulated knowledge and the lack of physical demands, says Sanzenbacher.

The overall least-vulnerable occupation, according to the Index, is that of compensation and benefits manager, while, 953 places away, the job judged most at risk to age-related decline is that of “dancer.” Clearly, no one told Martha Graham. She retired from dancing at age 76, and choreographed until her death at 96. And editors? If anyone is wondering, they rank 272, a little worse off than nuclear engineers and slightly better off than intelligence analysts.

Lasting abilities

A sampling of occupations from the Susceptibility Index, listed from least to most vulnerable to the effects of aging. The numbers represent a profession’s position in the overall index. The lower the number, the more enduring the skills.